Setting up your wiki

Go to www.wikispaces.com, make an username and password.

• "Create a new wiki"
• Click on "Edit this page":

You can copy and paste any info from any page or document onto the wiki.
If you put a link on the page, wikispaces will make a link out of it automatically.
It is easy to upload worksheets/handouts etc by clicking on the "insert files" button (the one with the tree). First click on browse and find your file, then click on "upload".

An overview of all wikispaces help pages, with detailed info on how it all works:
http://www.wikispaces.com/help index

If you prefer watching online video tutorials, here they are:
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction

Important:
Do not put your email address (or anybody else's) on the wiki; it might be 'harvested' by an automated spammer.

Going further

On the right hand side you will find a menu > Click on 'new page" to add a new page
Click on 'Manage Wiki' for a whole lot of options; change the appearance, add members, change names, manage files etc.

Remove the ads:

Click on Manage Wiki > (Settings) > Subscription > Tick the box for K - 12 wiki, they will remove the ads because your wiki is an educational one....

The structure of your wiki

Now that you have created your first home page, you need to think about the structure of your wiki.

• Are you going to have one wiki for each class? You could then create one separate 'master wiki' which links to all the other wikis you've created. (See Sara Liversidge's example: http://liversidge.wikispaces.com/)
• Are you going to use the wiki for the whole year? If so, how will you accommodate the different terms, units and topics?
• What name structure will you use for your new pages?
• Create a designated folder for all your wiki images; saves time and clicking around.

Making it look good...

• It is a good idea to use the heading-styles (see the drop down menu on the editing toolbar, the default setting is Normal). The headings are used by the wiki to create automated tables of content; handy if you have a lot of text.
• When you copy text from Word or somewhere else, it might be copied with the Word or Internet "styles" (weird formats or line spacing etc). To stop this from happening, you can first copy the text into Notepad (Go to START > ALL PROGRAMS > ACCESSORIES > NOTEPAD) and then copy it onto the wiki. Notepad removes all styles and formatting...
• Images: You can choose the way the text is aligned around your image, see the box which pops up when you insert an image.
• Some tips for customising your themes: wikispaces blog, customise themes
• If things really start jumping around on your page, open up the "TEXT EDITOR" on the wikispaces editor bar, it shows you the code and gives you a good overview of what is happening.

Wiki History Tab + Discussion Tab

• All your edits (and the students' edits) are logged under the History tab, so that means that you can keep track of who had edited what.
• I have not worked with this feauture much, but you can start a discussion with your students under the discussion tab.

Privacy

• Thanks Liz Chapman, for pointing out that you can indeed have a private wiki which can only be seen by the members of that wiki. To do this you first have to get your wiki certified as a K-12 Educational wiki. You can do this after you have created your educational content, and then go to MANAGE WIKI > SUBSCRIPTIONS > BOTTOM OF PAGE, TICK "K-12" BOX. Within a few days the people at wikispaces will remove your ads and upgrade your plan.
• Then go to MANAGE WIKI > PERMISSIONS > TICK "PRIVATE"